Should You Buy Shadowrun Returns?

Shadowrun Returns is an interesting little Kickstarter project, that holds its roots in a pen and paper roleplaying game. If you have been looking for a Sci-Fi RPG and you are keen to make your own content using the editor, I say go and buy it right now. It's only $20 USD and if this is your thing, it is well worth the price. For the rest of us it's best to hold of until a Steam sale comes along. Let's take a look at why.

The game lacks content. Right now all you get is a fairly short adventure, people are reporting it is taking them from 8 to 13 hours depending on the difficulty they are playing. It's not a bad little adventure, in a way it's nice that it is short but it has no replayability, due to it being so linear. People are working on their own content now and there are a few short adventures already out but most of them are still in the test phase. Which brings me to the next point.

The editor is powerful but difficult to use, I'd recommend checking out the tutorial videos here first. It's fine if this is what interests you but for the average gamer it is going to take way too long to learn and I can't really recommend it. Like I mentioned before, in a few months time the game will probably be on sale on Steam and users would have generated some great content for it. 

The game has all of the core mechanics sussed out and your characters are very flexible in what they can be upgraded to do, there is just not that much of anything to do. Jacking into the matrix is cool, you basically run about blasting programs as a virtual version of yourself. There are heaps of skills and abilities to learn, like magic, using throwing weapons etc. but there is little need to know most of these things at the moment. There is a huge system running at the core of this game that should even make the pen and paper adventurers happy but without content it feels a little lacklustre.

So the verdict is, buy it now if you have to, otherwise wait until it's on sale and there is a lot more user created content.  Harebrained Schemes have stated they are adding an extra graphical pack for those who want to make their own adventures and there is already a strong community around it, so it's just a matter of time 7.5/10.